#echinacea paradoxa

Echinacea paradoxa

July heat, road side dolostone glades, and a Missouri species and wide barren endemic that didn’t fall into the same collapse as many other cedar glade adapted species fell into, luckily this species does not fit into the plight narrow endemics now slowly coming back from the brink of habitat closure in other states faced. 

It’s always nice being able to see barren species in-situ for the first time in person and catching these at the end of anthesis was lucky. 

As it goes, Bush’s/MO/ Paradox yellow daisy, dolomite glade flower, found it’s self suitably in the south eastern portion of MO among the many Dolomite barrens in exposed south facing hillsides of the southern Ozark Range. These habitats were preserved by natural dry balding and 100 % natural fires for quite some time before active fire suppression became an issue. Lightning strike fires are fantastic and were once extremely common in the hills of the Ozarks, because of this, indigenous peoples and woodland bison genocide didn’t prohibit the growth of these barrens for quite some time, unlike the rest of the united states, which was ecologically connected with these interactions. 

As for disjunction of core 

Oklahoma’s southern most mountains and a small barren network in one county of Texas are the only other places to see this, and in those counties, it is fairly rare.